Eamon joined entrepreneur Greig Clark as this year’s inductees into the hallowed high school’s Hall of Excellence.

The proud Red Ram tradition coincided with the school’s Grades 9, 10, 11 and 12 faculty awards, and both inductees made a point of imparting wisdom on the current students.

Clark graduated from BCI in 1969 and went on to forge an impressive path in the business world, founding the successful North American chain College Pro Painters in 1971 to help pay his way through school at the University of Western Ontario, BCI staff noted.

The company grew into the largest residential painting company in the world. Clark also founded and was a managing partner of the Horatio Enterprise Fund from 1992 to 2006; he also served as chief executive officer of Arxx Building Products.

On the community front, he has also served on the boards of the Toronto Christian Resource Centre, Trails for Youth, Trinity College School and the Ivey Entrepreneurial Advisory Board.

Clark encouraged the students to remember that giving is better than receiving, and got emotional recalling his work revitalizing Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood.

“You start to do that, you start to look at things differently,” said Clark.

He also touched on another time-honoured maxim, “you can’t make old friends,” and told the students to look to the classmates on their right and left.

“Who will you stay in touch with?” asked Clark.

“Not just Facebook, guys, please. It’s got to be more visceral.”

Eamon, who was valedictorian of his graduating class in 1991, is chairman of the International Advisory Board for Collegiate Way International, a worldwide association of university colleges, director of continuing education and lecturer at Trent University and adjunct professor at the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies, BCI staff noted.

After high school, Eamon earned degrees at the University of Ottawa, Queen’s University and the University of Cambridge.

Along with his academic work, Eamon published the book Imprinting Britain (2015), which looks at how the printed word drove the development of colonial society in British North America.

Eamon demonstrated his skill as a lecturer with a dynamic speech that saw him frequently leave the podium.

Michael Eamon leaves the podium in an energetic speech before being inducted into to Brockville Collegiate Institute Hall of Excellence on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2017 in Brockville, Ont. (RONALD ZAJAC/The Recorder and Times)

“This space, this place, this BCI is an incredible place to be,” he told current students, adding they will become part of a great legacy.

Eamon placed this legacy in the context of a quote attributed, perhaps falsely, to Mark Twain: “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

“This place is more than a school; it’s a place where you get educated,” he said.

But he also celebrated the “crazy” or “fun” side of BCI, recalling how it was his cohort that named the school’s famous Red Ram mascot Norm, after the popular character from the then-current sitcom Cheers.

“You now know that it was crazy people like me who named the mascot Norm, and that is why he is the norm now,” Eamon quipped.